Canadian cover up not working

By
I found links to this and this last night on Amy Ridenour's blog. (She wrote another post on it this morning.) Which then led me to this. Apparently some Canadian bigwigs are trying to cover their butts by denying Canadian citizens access to information about said bigwigs' corruption. To that end the Canadian government is threatening to take legal action against Canadian citizens who link to or mention the US website that had the audacity to publish the report of the corruption. This is like a scene out of the novels I read in high school that featured totalitarian governments trying to control the flow of information to their citizens. Here's the post that started it all. See here for follow up posts.

Are they really going to prosecute their citizens for [gasp] reading the wrong blogs. Or for writing about the wrong things on their blogs? Could this be us if attempts by the feds to regulate what is said on blogs succeeds?

Update: Comment from a Canadian in the thick of things.

To be technically correct, the ban is to prevent tainting the jury pool for the fellow giving the testimony who also faces criminal charges. But the government which is under investigation is also the government pursuing the charges, and it seems very suspicious that they arranged for the trial to start just as the guy is giving testimony, thus creating the ban. The conflict of interest stinks. The manipulation of the rules stinks. And the choice of a publication ban as a way of protecting this guy's rights to a fair trial is just insulting -- apparently the right jury is an OJ jury made up of people who don't read, watch TV, or think.

Cheers
angry_in_t_o | Homepage | 04.05.05 - 1:01 pm | #

So this is the Canadian version of a gag order?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

What's in a flower?

By
Specifically hydrangea flowers. In this post I pointed out that anthocyanin (a family of plant pigments) appears blue at high pH, red at low pH and is responsible for the wide variety of colours in hydrangea flowers. Ilona pointed out that , "in hydrangeas you lower the ph for blue flowers (more acid) and raise it for pink (more alkaline)." I did a bit of checking and found that this is the case . At lower soil pH hydrangea flowers do appear blue and at higher soil pH they appear red. But soil pH is not the only thing that affects the colour of hydrangea flowers. It appears that pH inside the plant cell has an affect as well: Sepal Color Variation of Hydrangea macrophylla and Vacuolar pH Measured with a Proton-Selective Microelectrode Anthocyanin changes its color depending on pH (Goto 1987, Brouillard 1988, Goto and Kondo 1991). In strong acidic conditions it shows red, in neutral, purple and in alkaline, blue. But generally the vacuolar pH of plant cells is weakly aci
Read more

Treating autism as traumatic brain injury

By
I've been doing research into autism, dyspraxia, how the normal brain works, and how an autistic/dyspraxic brain works (or doesn't work). Traumatic injury to different parts of the brain can cause the same problems suffered by autistic and dyspraxic children. Compare this list of the functions of different parts of the brain and the problems caused by injuries to those areas with these descriptions of dyspraxia and autism. What is Developmental Dyspraxia? Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may b
Read more

Battlestar Galactica needs more colour?

By
Here are the letters I mentioned in the previous post. The one that started it (I'm guessing these letters were written after the show's first airing at the end of 2003): Galactica Needs More Diversity The problem I had with Battlestar Galactica was there were no major and very few minor African American characters. There were no Black men in the show at all or if they were, they had virtually no screentime. In the original series, Boomer and Tigh were both played by African American actors. In this rendition of Battlestar, those characters were played by Asian and White actors. In the Caprica city, there no African American extras. On the Galactica's bridge, there was only one African American actress. Another Black actress could be found playing a religious official that swore in the new President of the colonies. This was very troubling to me. Do you not want African Americans to watch your show? Do you want to project the idea that African Americans are not part of the
Read more